Silences

Is abridged in

Original publication date

1978

Epigraph

[This] is sent out to those into whose souls the iron has entered, and has entered deeply at some time of their lives. -Thomas Hardy, of his Jude the Obscure

Dedication

For our silenced people, century after century their being consumed in the hard, everyday essential work of maintaining human life. Their art, which still they made - as other contributions - anonymous, refused respect, recog... (show all)nition; lost.

For those of us (few yet in number, for the way is punishing), their kin and descendants who begin to emerge into more flowered and rewarded use of our selves in ways denied to the - and, by our achievement bearing witness to what was (and still is) being lost, silenced.

First words

A reader picking up Harper's Magazine in October 1965 would have learned from the cover that a number of famous writers "and others" contributed to the issue. "And others" included Tillie Olsen - whose exclusion from t... (show all)he cover list of contributors gave ironic resonance to the themes of omission, erasure, and invisibility that her article to eloquently explored. -Introduction, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic: The Lessons Silences Has Taught Us, Shelley Fisher Fishkin

---

Literary history and the present are dark with silences: some silences for years by our acknowledged great; some silences hidden; some the ceasing to publish after one work appears; some the never coming to book form at all. ... (show all)-Silences in Literature, 1962 unwritten talk, published Harper's Magazine, October 1965

Canonical DDC/MDS

809.89287

Canonical LCC

PN151 .O4